Ransom E. Olds: America's First Automotive Pioneer

Biographical profile of Ransom E. Olds, regarded as the first of the great American automobile pioneers. He not only sold the first car manufactured in America, his company was also the first of the great automobile enterprises, a model and training ground for the Dodge brothers, Henry Ford, Henry Leland (founder of Cadillac and Lincoln), and other automotive trailblazers. His first horseless carriage, a vehicle made of whitewood and oak, resting on three steel-tired buggy wheels, steered by an iron lever, with a steam engine for power, appeared in 1886. Since that time more than 35 million cars bearing his name—Oldsmobile—have been sold. Olds, like Ford, Chrysler and the Dodge brothers changed the industrial and more so the cultural future of America. [2,019-word Titans of Fortune article]